Noise-induced metastability in biochemical networks

Tim Rogers, Tommaso Biancalani, Alan J. McKane

Time: 10:25 - 10:50 AM

Type: Winning contributed talk

Affiliation: University of Bath, UK

Abstract:

The dynamics of intra-cellular biochemical reactions are strongly influenced by the effects of intrinsic noise, arising from the discrete nature of the molecular reactants. Here, we show that the presence of metastable states and radically different timescales are general features of a broad class of autocatalyic reaction networks, and moreover, that this fact may be exploited to gain analytical results. Our results demonstrate the important role played by noise in the complex relationship between network structure and function.